Every year on the day before Halloween, a special kind of madness descends on the Folsom Pro Rodeo grounds. Ex and current pros, local racers, cycling community members, and local families don costumes and take part in the biggest cyclocross event in California: The Folsom Rodeocross Halloween Race. Come along for the ride with an event report by photographer Erik Mathy!
It’s the day before Halloween and Frank’s birthday. He’s standing at the entrance to the Folsom Pro Rodeo stadium, wearing a top hat with a patch that says “Freakshow” on it, resplendent in a red bandleader’s jacket. Frank is a local cycling event organizer and race promoter in the Sacramento area. His personal series, the one he’s most known for, is the yearly Rodeocross cyclocross series that’s held at the Folsom Pro Rodeo stadium. It’s been going strong for over a decade.
Within the Rodeocross series, there is one event that brings all the racers, parents, kids, retired pros, Burning Man aficionados, and tracklocross nuts out to the yard: The Rodeocross Halloween Race. Or party, really, since there are no places given or points awarded for the annual Halloween event. It’s pure shenanigans. There is a US Postal Service group costume, complete with blood bags hooked up to wrists. A kid on a BMX bike with a basket and an ET doll. More tandems than I’ve personally ever seen in one place at one time, let alone with costumed riders being carried up a rodeo stadium staircase.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Frank tells me, somewhat bemused and sounding maybe even a little shocked. “We have 450 racers today. 450?! That makes us the biggest cyclocross race, event, whatever, in the state of California. I don’t promote it. There’s no advertising. We announce the date, put up the course, and the rest just kind of… happens.”
In reality, 450 participants at a cyclocross event makes it one of the largest cyclocross happenings in the nation, right up there with any of the USA Cycling pro cyclocross race series events. It’s a ridiculous number of people, made even more ridiculous by the costumes and an additional several hundred raucous spectators, a DJ, lights, an animatronic nightmare clown, and a huge, inflated skull with lit-up red eyes.
After being serenaded for his birthday by over 600 people, Frank lets the first wave loose. The party begins. Over the next 2 hours many laps are ridden, cups of beer are handed out to racers, crashes abound, retired legends such as Katerina Nash and Geoff Kabush roll by, a dead bride with a beard stops mid-race to trim his/her/their wedding dress so it’ll stop catching in their bike’s chain, Lachlan Morton captains a tandem while dressed as Liam from Oasis, blood is spilled (this is still cyclocross, after all), and dust slowly comes to coat everything and everyone.
At the end of the night, as the course is broken down and people slowly, in states of exhaustion or drunkenness or both, drift off to their cars to make their way home, Frank calls me over. He asks me to take a photo of him handing out a statue to Marcus Fletcher, a local racer. It says “Most Rodeocross Vibe” on the plaque. “What’s that for?”, I ask Frank. “Week two he did a full front flip over the barriers off his tracklocross bike, the following week he did an endo from the bottom of the dip into Heckle Hollow and catapulted his bike into the crowd. Then he finished off the season here tonight in a gold lamé miniskirt and bikini top. After he lost the top, he covered himself while running around trying to find it as if his naked torso mattered. ”
This is a pretty good summary of not just Frank’s viewpoint on his race series, but also why the final Rodeocross event lands on Halloween. There is some serious racing going on earlier in the season, for sure. But it’s never so serious that folks aren’t having fun with it, and it all builds up to one last giant explosion of community-based silliness. As various other cycling disciplines scratch their heads trying to figure out why their participation numbers drop, they should perhaps look to people like Frank for the answer to their ills. A guy who runs a local, community-based race series that isn’t so serious that it can’t have silly ass fun as a central core value.